


Coats, Lake Water, and Other Romantic Mishaps

by Andsoshewrites



Category: Total Drama (Cartoon)
Genre: Coat Metaphors, Getting Together, Kissing, Lake Wawanakwa, M/M, Total Drama Action, Total drama island - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 15:17:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16663261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andsoshewrites/pseuds/Andsoshewrites
Summary: My take on how Chris and Chef got 'together' via post-being-tossed-in-a-lake freakouts and coat metaphors.Happy 40th, Chris!





	Coats, Lake Water, and Other Romantic Mishaps

**Author's Note:**

> I got a bit nostalgic about Total Drama a few weeks ago (I used to be a HUGE Total Drama fan when I was like 9-12) and decided to rewatch Island, Action, and World Tour. Sierra reminded me Chris's 40th was coming up, and so, I decided to write a little something for it. I honestly can't BELIEVE I've never written about Total Drama before (though, I'm honestly glad, since my fanfics from that time period were abysmal).
> 
> #MoreLoveForChref2k18

So.

Chris _kind of_ _sort of_ has a friends-with-benefits thing going on with his…well, with Chef.

Sue him.

Look, looking after a bunch of generally unstable 16-year-olds isn’t exactly the most exciting thing in the world—that is, in between any bouts of torturing them via challenge. And when you’re a sexually charged, consenting adult who enjoys inflicting pain anyway and you’re sharing a trailer with another sexually charged, consenting adult who gives you a good run for your money in terms of brutality…well, to cut to the juicy part, sometimes you end up banging against a kitchen counter. On more than one occasion. And, sometimes, in other places too. (A lot of other places, if we’re being honest here, which Chris…really isn’t regarding any sort of thing [meaning feelings] that might give that aforementioned ‘friends’ piece of the friends-with-benefits denomination a nice knock over onto its head.) It’s fine. Until it’s Not. (It’s _great_ —it’s really, _really_ great until it’s…well, it’s still pretty great, but that’s aside the point.)

Chris knows the exact moment this Fineness broke into Not Fineness, and when, afterwards, banging his…coworker in their spare time, outside of challenges, when the cameras were paying less attention to the contestants and certainly less attention to him and Chef, started to feel…different. Like with each gasp he might just lose his breath forever, like his heart just might reach a speed that would stop it in his chest, like the pinkness of his blush might just grow so luminous and spacious across the skin that it would remain there—a totalizing, permanent bruise. Like he might just _die_ in the grand old act of fucking and have to be wheeled naked out of he and Chef’s trailer like an old person and then he’d _really_ never be on TV ever again! And don’t even get him started on kissing him or just, for Pete’s sake, hanging out with him!

(Though, if you ask Chris, this freak out _should_ have started much earlier. _Spraying water into his mouth during the scary movie challenge?_ Really, _Mclean?_ )

But, the moment. We’re losing track of _the moment_.

Geoff, Duncan, and Owen have finally managed to throw Chef into the lake, laughing in triumph and then running off to join everyone else in celebrating Owen’s win. By this point, Chris has already dragged himself out of the lake and is sitting cross-legged and frowning, distinctly sopping cat-ish, as he watches Chef get chased around on the beach before finally getting tossed into the water. Chris gathers himself to his feet, lake water spilling from every plane of his body, looking a lot less dignified than he wants to as he walks over to hold his hand out to Chef to help him onto the dock—only just to go falling back into the water when Chef takes it. Chef snickers at him.

“Nice job, scrawny. Remind me to hit up your personal trainer.”

“A guy _tries_ to be nice,” Chris says, raising his voice and scowling, “and he gets thrown into a lake and made fun of by his…by _you_! I’m gonna need like _five_ showers after this—and _twice_ as many hair treatments!”

“Ah, quit your whining and get back up on the dock, pretty boy.” And with that, Chef drapes an arm over the dock and hauls himself up. “Do you want some help? _I’m_ not going anywhere helping your chicken-legs-ass self up.”

It’s a bit easier to swallow your pride when a bunch of 16-year-olds have already shoved it down for you with a great big gulp of lake water on the side.

And then, _and then_.

There’s this moment where they’re both standing face to face on the dock, hands linked together. Chris has to crane his neck to see Chef’s little half-smirk, but it’s a motion his neck is well used to by now. And, with the contestants all off paying absolutely no attention to the two of them, Chef leans down and kisses him—just quickly before he tells Chris to come along so they can celebrate with everyone else.

That’s the series of events some of the furrier (or scalier, or slimier, or feathery-er) residents of Camp Wawanakwa see or that anyone would have seen had they been doing a bit of eavesdropping that night. But Chris was caught right there in it, and he sees Chef up close, slickly shiny and dripping.

Their TV visages have been wetly wiped away, the cameras are turned far, far away from them, and all of their movie makeup has been sucked up into the lake. Owen, Duncan, and Geoff had dethroned them, essentially: the untouchable hosts turned into rather ordinarily pathetic-looking creatures of the lake, and they touch at the hands to share that slipperiness—both of the skin and of who they are in those moments. Chris feels like his worst self, his most vulnerable self, the self he’s always trying to cover through equally as pathetic-looking whiny and tyrannical outbursts. But Chef doesn’t often or seriously engage with these, allowing all of Chris’s gripes to go up in the air and then float back down on soft, damp currents.

The hand touching is already on the wrong side of too much— _I see you_ , it says, _I see you and I touch you and I comprehend you_. The kiss, then, the wet press of lake water-covered lips to another, is that one swipe of slipperiness that makes you slip. It isn’t strong and forceful—it isn’t the kind of fall that twists you painfully wrong, and it isn’t the kind of kiss that swaps spit and leaves the two of them all kiss-bruised and certainly suggests sex if they aren’t already there. The purpose of this kiss is just for the sake of itself, just for the sake of being slippery, and Chris licks at the lake water that Chef has deposited onto his lips from his own in the slight daze of one who has, well, _slipped_ , allowing himself to be led away from the dock, their hands still dripping together.

Then, as they approach the campers, Chef slides his hand out of Chris’s, and Chris’s mind suddenly slams into Not Fineness.

* * *

 

So.

 _Total Drama Action_ starts two days after _Island_ because the first season was so popular. _Definitely not_ because Chris doesn’t know how he’s going to deal with Chef outside of the context of the show.

That wouldn’t be a very good explanation anyway—because Chris starts treating Chef differently on _Action_ regardless.

It’s like Chris is perpetually half stuck in a coat, one sleeve flipped inside out, and he’s caught in this flailing, contradictory motion, where, as he’s trying to push the sleeve away from him, he’s still trying to keep the coat on, half pushing, half pulling and clinging, his arms more like twin enemies than the coherent pair he’s used to.

Chris’s worst self—his most vulnerable self—feels less like a looming potential and more like a lurking reality; he knows that Chef needs to leave if he’s to vanquish this sheer _imposter_ of himself, but that would require Chef to _leave_ , which sounds like absolute shit when Chef has been his partner in crime for months now. Therefore, Chris’s dilemma.

So Chris skimps out on Chef’s paychecks and orders him around while still snickering away with him at the contestants’ misfortunes and cuddling up to him in more ways than one.

He even had the perfect opportunity to see Chef booted off the show—when he found out that Chef had an illegal alliance with DJ—, but he was also weirdly disappointed in him, and instead of letting the producers do what they would with him, he convinced them to let Chef stay on the show.

So, is Chris _maybe,_ a _teensy_ bit overcritical of Chef (more than usual) this season? Yes. Does he also corral him into the contestant watch room and have him play cards with him and just generally hang out with him? Also yes.

Part of Chris keeps expecting the situation to break, for something to happen between the two of them, but there comes a point during the season where Chef stops grumblingly complaining about Chris’s trying-to-flip-the-sleeve-back-out relationship flailing, and the tension that’s been giving Chris crow’s feet ( _crow’s feet_!) just kind of…fades away. Their sexual encounters stop being so frequent, but other than that, it’s almost like how it was on _Island_ again, maybe even a little better, since they know each other better now.

And this (along with a little bit of denial) is the reason why no red flags go off in Chris’s head when Chef actually prepares a nice breakfast for Beth and Duncan during the finale.

“I get it—the food’s laced with laxatives, right? Nice,” Chris says with a smug little smile.

“Nope! Just going out in style!”

Chris’s chest suddenly starts to ache.

“Going out? What do you mean?” There’s an edge in Chris’s voice now, his lungs brushing against and enveloping some of that ache, carrying it up out of his throat and into the air.

“That’s the last meal I’m ever gonna serve on this two-bit show. I got me a gig cheffing on a swanky cruise ship. So, you can kiss my behind goodbye!”

 _Obviously not_ , Chris’s good and dear mental friend Denial says. “Yeah, yeah, and I got a job hosting the Oscars. Very funny.”

Chef sticks the sticky grease paintbrush he’s holding onto Chris’s hat. “Who’s laughing?” Chef asks, and Chris tweaks that ache in his chest so he can look more like Normal and Fine Host Chris Mclean, not Disaster and Vulnerable Mess Chris Mclean, ribbing Chef about his cruise ship job and ordering him around. _Please stay_ , he begs him, telling him, “You can’t bail! We’re a team.” _Leave so I don’t have to face this—please_ , he begs him, saying to him, “You gonna fire the cannon or are you just gonna stand there and be useless?”

Maybe Chef realizes and maybe he doesn’t when he responds instead of grumbling that, this time, he’s tugging on that troublesome sleeve instead of just leaving Chris to struggle with it. Stuttering a bit in anger, Chef says, “Now, you see that? That attitude is why I’m outta here! I’ve had it with watching you do your bogus job and get all the glory while I’m stuck with all the grunt work!” Chef tugs—and Chris tugs right back. They decide to switch jobs for the day, and the seams on Chris’s metaphorical coat start to tear.

It feels like Chris’s vulnerable, terrible self has just been torn out into the open with one fatal, accurate strike. In the past, this self that Chris has spent his whole life trying to seal away has had to have been meticulously dug out of him, but Chef has done the same so flippantly. And the thing is, he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.

Chris feels the tears before they start. The bubbling, rushing heat and wobbliness around the mouth, all backgrounded by the sounds of Beth floundering around trying to climb up the pole to get her flag and then trying to get out of the water after she falls through the floor of the boat.

“Do you need makeup, man?” an intern asks the minute a tear rolls down Chris’s cheek.

“No! Get out of my face!” Chris rather aggressively paws at his cheek; he’s always aware of the cameras, but now, they feel giant pairs of eyes staring him down, exposing this part of him he’s tried so hard to keep down. _Thank god_ Total Drama _isn’t live_ , he thinks. He tries to save some of his dignity by grabbing some onions and cutting them. It’s ridiculous, demeaning, and embarrassing, but as Chris comes to realize, the thought of Chef leaving the show is worse, and also, as he comes to realize, he can’t whine and stomp his foot out of this.

But, in the end, after the events of the whole season, after Chris and Chef decide to switch jobs, after Chef running back and forth between Beth and Duncan, the whole situation just…deflates (with a bit of help from Beth). Feeling frustrated and lost, Chris decides to bring back the natural disaster challenge—the one that broke Owen’s jaw—just because he can—meaning, just because he gets to directly inflict pain on the contestants through this one. To his surprise, though, Chef drives over with a safe to chuck at the finalists. “It made me think of you,” he says; that ache in Chris’s chest fizzles out, and Chris finally shoves his arm through the goddamn coat sleeve.

Chris had always thought that, if he reached this point, he wouldn’t be like himself anymore. He has never once wanted to let go of his protective outer surface, the one he eagerly feeds to all the cameras. But, though the words that spill from his mouth certainly come from deep places, they sound surprisingly like himself. They feel right and fulfilling. Pouring his heart out, even in the somewhat roundabout way Chris goes about it, doesn’t have that stomach twisting curl Chris associates with spilling one’s guts.

Chef tells him, looking quite fond, that he couldn’t leave him alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Another take--even after this, idk if Chris + Chef would actually say that they were dating or anything like that, and regardless, I think they have a somewhat open relationship. They just...kind of know that they're each other's main boos without it really needing to be said. Is this Good Relationship Work? no. Are Chref mentally/emotionally/relationally healthy in most senses? Also no!


End file.
